SACRAMENTO, CA -- Amid all the furor over lower minority enrollment in certain graduate programs in the University of California system, attention has focused on the supposed effects of a less diverse student body. Race-preference advocates argue that if more minorities aren't admitted into medical schools, for example, the medical needs of minority communities will not be met. Is it that simple, however?

Take the case of Dr. Patrick Chavis. Dr. Chavis is the black doctor who, as an applicant to the University of California at Davis medical school in the late 1970s, was admitted over Allan Bakke despite the latter's higher statistical qualifications. Bakke subsequently sued, and his case eventually forced the courts and the nation to rethink the fundamental fairness and usefulness of race preferences.

Dr. Chavis went on to become an ob-gyn in central Los Angeles. During the Proposition 209 campaign, opponents of the ballot measure often pointed to Dr. Chavis as a prime example of someone who became successful despite being the beneficiary of the UC's preferential admissions policy. Dr. Chavis was especially lauded for practicing medicine in a low-income black neighborhood, thereby "giving back something" to the community.

It turns out now that Dr. Chavis was indeed giving something back to his community: bad medical practices. Two months ago, the state medical board suspended the license of Dr. Chavis because of his "inability to perform some of the most basic duties required of a physician." Finding Dr. Chavis guilty of gross negligence and incompetence, adminis-trative law judge Samuel Reyes said that to allow Dr. Chavis to continue to practice medicine would "endanger the public's health, safety and welfare."

Dr. Chavis exhibited his staggering incompetence in a number of shocking cases. The most appalling involved a woman named Tammaria Cotton. Although an ob-gyn, Dr. Chavis had branched off into doing liposuction, despite having completed only two days of a four-day course on the procedure. As he performed liposuction on Ms. Cotton, the woman's blood pressure fell dramatically and she complained of breathing difficulties. "If you can talk, you can breathe," was Dr. Chavis' cold reply. Reddish fluid leaked from her body for hours, dripping into a pool on the floor. How did Dr. Chavis react to this emergency? He disappeared. Ms. Cotton died that night of cardiac arrest.

Writing about the Chavis case, Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby notes that a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that while 88 percent of white students pass the national medical board exam on their first try, only 49 percent of black first-time test-takers pass. Jacoby rightly observes that, "Minority communities and poor families don't need black doctors. They need good doctors. And when universities admit medical students on grounds other than academic ability, they will turn out fewer doctors who are good." Bad ideas have bad consequences. The horrible idea of race preferences produced Patrick Chavis, and for Tammaria Cotton the consequences were worse than bad, they were fatal.

-Lance T. Izumi